“Looks like the wife was right about you, boy.”

“Hm?” Atlas glanced up from the mug of mead - bought and paid for - he’d been nursing since the three of them had ordered.

“Young Sanda told me how you helped with dinner tonight. Looks like there’s a helpful spirit hanging about you after all.”

“I just cut a few vegetables is all.” Atlas smiled.

“And spent half the afternoon drinking when you were done.” Kleis grumbled from behind a wall of his own tankards.

Atlas ignored him. The man had been in a foul mood since they’d packed up the wagon again, almost as full as when they’d arrived, trading wheat and pork for sweetmeats and wool Phineus thought would sell well in the city. There was even a small bag of letters tucked between sacks, villagers paying a few grains each to deliver them to the city while the bridge was out.

They were the only ones in the crowded common room staying the night. Everyone else, it seemed, were locals gathering for hot food, cold drink, and fresh gossip.

Atlas eavesdropped shamelessly, watching Sanda and Mrs Damastes - mainly Mrs Damastes, if he was honest - flit from table to table with heavily laden trays. The bridge dominated conversation, along with endless speculation about the missing patrol, the absent peddler, and the possibility that all three events were some scheme perpetrated by “the folk”, the group they were currently at war with, or that some dread beast emerged from the wilds far to the east to ravage the area.

“Here you are, boys. Eat up.” Three steaming bowls clinked down onto the table before them. Mrs Damastes glanced between them. “Any of you need a refill?”

“No, but th-”

“Right here!” Kleis cheerily raised his half full mug, cutting Phineus off part way.

“I’ll be right back with another mug for you, let me just clean up a few of those for you.”

Mrs Damastes leaned over, and Atlas took his chance, scanning her beneath the table as she demolished Kleis’ makeshift barrier and carried it away.

HUMAN

NEW CODE ACQUIRED [N/A: CODE LOCKED]

OPEN GRID Y/N?

Bingo. It wasn’t his scanning level then. Atlas swallowed, his mouth suddenly dry as his finger hovered over the button on his bracer.

ACCESSING

The blue bar dropped rapidly to half and a screen similar to his own Form grid flashed up on his monitor, the lone square of the code grid entwined with a chain of gold that ended in a golden heart with a keyhole in its centre. Atlas reached to-

An elbow jostled his arm.

“Now don’t say I never do anything for you, kid.” A warm boozy cloud misted his face as Kleis’ own ugly mug leaned in close, his loud voice slurring. “Now you get another eyeful on the way back.”

“Wh-what are you talking about?” Atlas flinched, covering the monitor with his armoured hand. He already had misgivings about examining something so fundamentally private, letting Kleis see it would be an order of magnitude worse.

“Come on, you’ve been at it all evening. I don’t think there’s anyone in here that hasn’t noticed.” Mead splashed across the table - and Atlas - as Kleis gestured to the room in general.

Atlas cringed, casting a glance around the common room. A few faces had turned to look.

“Let the boy be, Kleis. You’re embarrassing him.” Phineus waved a stick of seed covered rye bread that had been on its way to his bowl.

“Hey, she’s a fine woman, don’t get me wrong, but Leander’s been courting her for coming on six years now. Some kid whose beard hasn’t even come in yet doesn’t have a chance.”

“There’s nothing wrong with being precocious.” Phineus spoke around a mouthful of stew and bread. “Now just eat your stew.”

“He can be as precious as he likes, I’m just saying he needs to pick his targets better.”

The pair diverged into a brief tangent about “precious” versus “precocious” while Atlas did his best to merge with the table. Mrs Damastes returned, thin-lipped, to unceremoniously dump Kleis’ drink on the table in front of him, shooting Atlas a look that was either pity or contempt before spinning around and marching off to another table.

It wasn’t helped by Kleis’ obvious wink at him while she was there.

Atlas slumped over, half tempted to try and drown in his stew.

“Precocious”.

Every man had a beard. Not a single person he’d met had been clean shaven, while his skin was smooth and hairless, like a porcelain doll, including the colour.

That was why everyone had been so nice to him. To them he wasn’t just some stranger passing through, but a child, old enough to wander around unaccompanied, perhaps, but still in need of support and protection. And no wonder Sanda had apologised earlier. What had she said? “Didn’t your mother ever tell you”? As far as she knew, he was the lone survivor of some ruined village to the North, an orphan.

And to Mrs Damastes he was some dumb kid she’d found wandering the beach one afternoon.

The monitor switched off, timed out. Atlas logged his spoon and started eating with a sigh. It defaulted back to the main menu every time it switched off. He’d lost his chance to look.

It stung, but if he thought about it rationally, he was literally born last week, and not even a full week ago at that, with nothing, least of all knowledge. Whether it was some kind of camouflage by his bracers or some side effect of his unnatural physiology, he’d arguably only survived this long because people, particularly a few of people in the inn at this moment, had gone out of their way for him as a result.

He never got another opportunity to scan Mrs Damastes that evening. Sanda handled their table for the rest of the night.

SEVEN DAYS REMAINING

“Chin up, boy,” Phineus called back from the driver’s seat. “We’ll soon be on our way to the city.” The village slowly dwindled behind them as they headed towards the rising sun. Or headed towards where the rising sun might have been if it hadn’t been raining. Hard.

“I’m fine, Mister Phineus. Just thinking.”

Atlas sat alone in the back of the wagon, listening to the pattering rain on the leather above.

It was half true, at least. He was thinking. He’d spent most of the night doing so as well, the grim message had just given him a new topic to distract himself with.

Seven days remaining. If they went on the Charon today, which wasn’t likely, what with the last field to clear and store, and the wagons to prepare for the trip, then what, a day to the city? Two? He had no idea, but the plodding sow had a way of making any distance seem further than it was. Even Kleis, who had elected to walk rather than deal with the swaying cart in his delicate state, had no trouble keeping up with its sedate pace.

Atlas was trying hard to feel sympathetic towards the man as water dripped from his bulbous nose into his coarse beard, their early start only compounding his misery.

Very, very hard.

When he arrived in the city, he’d have three days to find someone to help him, with little money or information, while doing his best to conceal what exactly the problem was from the ones that seemed most likely able to help him… when he’d already lost a week due to a single bad thunderstorm.

And if he couldn’t find someone within those three days... he’d need to spend the last day getting as far away from the city and people as he could, just in case.

A peal of thunder rolled across the hills as if to punctuate the grim thought. Atlas winced.

“The Charon isn’t going to sink is it?”

“Nothing stops the Charon, boy.” Phineus snorted. Atlas could just about see the back of his hooded head through the clutter of the wagon. “You should see it in winter, just tearing through the ice like nothing.”

Well that was something at least. Atlas sighed, which turned into a yawn, staring out at the village in the distance. The inn stood out as the largest of the village’s few stone buildings, peeking out above the thatched roofs.

Even if he did manage to find someone to help him, what then? The way Phineus talked about it, he expected to sell most of his wares in a day or two before heading back to the farm, where the next year’s crops would need sowing before winter hardened the soil. The bridge wasn’t likely to be fixed any time in the foreseeable future either, so there was a good chance he’d find himself alone in a city in the middle of a war and unlikely to have much interest in giving handouts to strangers.

At least being drafted was unlikely, which suited him just fine. A life on the front lines fighting for a country, possibly even a species, that wasn’t his own wasn’t appealing, particularly with no idea who they faced or why. And while he might have the ability to master any weapon in his hands, with no idea in his head how he did it, he couldn’t impart that knowledge to anyone else as an instructor either.

With his talents he wasn’t too concerned that he could find something he could do. Wars accompanied labour shortages, after all, but what? There were several jobs he simply had no hope of doing. A blacksmith that couldn’t even hold the item they were working on? A chef who juggled menus for every condiment? A builder who could either hold hammer or chisel? Such bizarre scenarios had evidently never occurred to the bracers’ designer.

Likewise, “knowing” how to make a technically perfect cut with a knife didn’t include knowing where that cut was supposed to go, making surgeon and barber, assuming they weren’t the same thing here, equally unviable. So most trades he could actually do physically probably meant learning the traditional way anyway. Was he really born to be a farmer? Or the most overqualified day labourer on the planet?

Then again, wasn’t he a “child”? He might be able to apprentice himself to someone, learn a good trade, and then, when the bridge was fixed or he’d saved up the crossing fee for the Charon, maybe he could-

“Move over, squirt. I’m coming in.”

Muddy boots trampled his daydreams as Kleis clambered aboard. Atlas scooched away, squeezing between two canvas sacks.

“Thought I’d take my chances. It’s vile out there. Going to get worse, too. Sky’s near as black as pitch on the horizon.”

“Just don’t throw up in here.” Atlas muttered. He couldn’t see out the front of the wagon from his new spot, but it had been pretty grey over Phineus’ shoulder before.

“I’d aim for your head instead, but I’d not want to get it on the stock.”

Atlas snorted and turned away, his mind churning over his thoughts until the same swaying that tormented Kleis lulled him to long overdue sleep.